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The Year in Rap: Why Hip-Hop Shrinks in ’13

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The year 2013 was when hip hop’s infatuation with art-world credibility and iconoclastic rejections of wealth hit critical mass. But this shift towards the conflation of artistry and status seems as much an adaptation as a movement, and maybe that’s because the money seems more finite than ever. Even the artists who do make it big – well, have continued to make it big, maybe – are cranking out high-stakes opuses that are polarizing at best. For every fan struck by Drake‘s emotional rawness on Nothing Was the Same, there’s someone who recoils at how manipulative it feels to them. For every head wowed by Eminem‘s tongue-twisting squibbily-flabbily-doo approach to lyrical-lyrics, there’s someone who desperately wishes he used all that virtuosity to say something, anything new. And for everyone wowed by Yeezus – which is probably the closest there is to a consensus rap album this year— there’s someone who finds it too far afield of whatever first made them like Kanye back in 2004.

I liked Yeezus plenty. It’s a confrontational album from every sociological and pop-culture angle, but not so difficult that it’s a chore to listen to in search of whatever deeper messages West might be embedding beneath its supposedly contradictory new-money class-war surface. It felt like one logical conclusion that follows the stretch where, “If you grew up with holes in your zapatos/ You celebrate the minute that you’re havin’ dough” – to quote Yeezy’s patron/cohort/peer Jay Z, whose own settling-down process has similarly skirted his own take on pop-art consumerism. It’s a very specific and personal form of power and recognition of one’s own ascendance to name-check all the Basquiats you’ve got, especially a dozen years after the album that started both Kanye and Hova on their paths to MOMA-set cred saw Jay Z itching to avenge another exploited icon of early ’80s hip-hop culture in the Cold Crush Brothers.

But it’s also a pretty loud statement of defiance that fellow pushing-40 NYC rapper J-Zone — who, after a disillusioned hiatus, unretired with the masterpiece of aging-head wiseassery Peter Pan Syndrome — cut a track where he pondered making money by stealing all those fine-art pieces from rich rappers. After all, living in poverty while somebody else makes millions off your work is the end result of Industry Rule #1, and being on the other end of that equation for once doesn’t make things any easier for everyone.